The high priests of open storage have finally delivered products for our approbation, three of them. Sun's radically new 7000 line of storage appliances combines embedded servers, drive arrays and a comprehensive open storage software stack in a low-priced bundle. Will customers take the bait?
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"radically simple"?

They're NAS boxen, simple as that. Forget about NetApps and their famously simple setup and amdinistration, the competing NAS solutions from HP, IBM and Dell run the well-known and understood Windows Storage Server OS or Linux, and in my experience Windows and Linux admins are cheaper to employ than Slowaris ones. Most companies have Windoze skills inhouse already, so the admin skills are already there for a Windows Storage Server NAS, and many will have Linux skills already too. The big problem for the new Sun kit is they run Slowaris, which means unless you have Slowaris skills already you will have to pay the extra to train staff or recruit expensive Slowaris admins.

Have to get my eyes checked

@Matt

Re: "radically simple"?

You're making an assumption here - the hardware is but one aspect of Amber Road. The other is the software which sits on top of OpenSolaris and provides a web GUI and CLI for management of all aspects, effectively turning these x86 boxes into NASes.

A person running this stuff would have to know Solaris as much as a person who runs NetApps needs to know BSD.

Re: "radically simple"?

Matt, Matt, Matt... Has Sun really worried you with your HP customers? It's an appliance as everyone has stated already, so no OpenSolaris knowledge needed.

To the other FUD spreader commenting on the NetApp/ZFS lawsuit. Since Sun got that lawsuit taken out of Texas, and put into California (where both vendors actually reside), the lawsuit has been steadily going Sun's way. If you say "don't buy Sun storage until the lawsuit is decided" then you sure as hell should say "don't buy NetApp until the lawsuit is decided" as it appears to be a much bigger issue for NetApp than it has ever been for Sun.

The point is that you get all of these features for pennies on the dollar when compared to IBM, HP, Dell, EMC, or even NetApp. They're all expensive to start with, and expensive to add all of the features that Sun just throws in.

Compare a base model 7110 costing $10,995 for 2TB. You get all of the goodies of the other vendors, but they are all included for free. From what I can see, it appears that Analytics is the biggest killer app of these boxes.

Who is Matt Bryant?

Who is this cynical nay-sayer Matt Bryant? Did he even take a look at Sun's offerings before leaping in with spurious assertions? "From my experience..." - what experience exactly is that then?

From what I can tell the Sun kit is the first on the market to make *effective* use of Flash storage by tying it closely to the ZFS filesystem and introducing a new cache level. The separation of read and write biased Flash makes good sense. And the simple user interface looks like it's a doddle to use. To try a simulation of the GUI, see http://www.sun.com/storage/disk_systems/unified_storage/resources.jsp

re: Matt Bryant

RE: Bill

As a Sunshiner you should know better than to compare our Objects Of Heveanly Conputing to lesser vendors' "kit". You should know that a 2TB 7110 at $10,995 is expensive when compared to a 2TB HP DL160 G5 Storage Server which is £1995 list price in the UK as customers will then fail to realise that our Object of Heavenly Computing comes with my blessing, compared to the HP system coming with the Devil's Windows Storage Server 2003 x64 Edition OS. Customers should not be fooled into thinking they can also use the DL160 with other standard Windows applications when our OOHC is an appliance only (even if they were blessed with Solaris skills), much like those heretical NetApp systems we deigned to borrow WAFL from to use in our Holy ZFS. Instead, should a customer ask why Sun OOHCs are so expensive and question their flexibility, you should simply raise an eyebrow disdainfully and remind them they are buying SALVATION!, not just a NAS.

RE: Bill - management tools?

Hmm, quick perusal of the Sun website for the 7110, and what do we find? The so-called "simple management tool" is DTrace. Yes, that old cludge that not only requires Solaris skils but also - if you want to make your own queries - you need to learn how to script in the obscure D Language. Compare to the graphical interface of Windows Storage Server, let alone the compatibility with other tools such as MS MOM, HP OpenBiew Operations, or just Pp System Insight Manager, where the only skills required are basic Windows management and a browser. I don't think HP will be worried in the slightest, nor Dell, IBM, the geezer that makes Red Hat NAS boxes on eBay....

I am now convinced that Matt is HP shill

He was bashing Sun in the 3bil mark cap article as well, and I think perhaps Jon Schartz (doesn't uk have libel laws?) are one in the same, don't believe the hype Sun has some great products on market and is GROWING.

Disclosure:

To be fair, I do own SUN stock because I believe in the long term future of the company, I don't work for them, never have, and I do have Solaris skills, but have never used them for my source of income.

Sun did get a bad rep for reliabliity that they worked so hard to build with their Sparc line, but lost on thier sunfire servers - hopefully they will pay attention to this and correct the trend in their own hardware (opteron boxes seem rock solid).

Whoa

RE: Rob Dobs

"I am now convinced that Matt is HP shill...." LOL, next you're going to accuse the Reg of being an HP marketting machine! Just typical of a Sunshiner that you can't believe anyone other than a competitor would diss your beloved Sun. Wake up! You are losing market share for a reason - customers don't like what you are selling! Mind you, it's probably too late for Sun to start listening to their customers now.

"....and I think perhaps Jon Schartz (doesn't uk have libel laws?) are one in the same...." Ah, you must be confusing me with the other Matt Bryant that has been posting here, or is that just me and I'm schizophrenic? Who knows! Then again, it could be the real Mr SChwartz. Does it upset you? Do you have that much worthless Sun stock? I would note, however, that libel laws have never stopped a procession of Sun salesgrunts telling me the most unbelievable porkies about other vendors' kit. Bit late for Sunshiners to be acting all moralistic, me thinks.

"...don't believe the hype Sun has some great products on market and is GROWING...." Actually, there was a Reg article in July (http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2008/07/10/sun_under_gun/) on how bad Sun's outlook was when the market cap was $7.7bn. Yes, the Sun market cap has dropped almost $5bn - roughly 65% - in just four months, and the Sunshiners are still pretending all is fine in the world! If anyone is falling for the hype then it's you, Rob.

"....and I do have Solaris skills, but have never used them for my source of income...." Well, the way it's going you probably won't get a chance to use those Solaris skills for a source of income! I hope, for your sake, you have some Linux skills....

And for the ACers whittering on about DTrace, I must apologise - after hearing the other Sunshiners bleat on about DTrace as some "amazing debugging tool" I now realise it's just what HP's GlancePlus was about ten years ago! I'm not surprised you have to give it away for free.

SAN again.

The idiot Matt strikes again

Dear Matt,

Yes, the underlying component for the analytics feature on these systems is DTrace but as many have commented, they're applicances! You do not need any Solaris skills whatsoever, it's a point and click interface using a web browser!!

"Compare to the graphical interface of Windows Storage Server", erm I just did and this new Sun kit DOES have a graphical interface (and a very powerful one). No learning how to script in the "obscure" D language needed.

You've obviously not even looked at this new hardware/software and know nothing about it. You just instantly discredit it, no matter how good it may be or what features or advantages over the competition it might have, just because it's made by Sun

"that old cludge" is actually pretty new and is one of the most advanced and powerful tracing tools available, but of course you wouldn't even consider that because of your assumption that it's crap because it's from Sun.

Before you think about replying with your tired clichés and stereotypical remarks, let me tell you this. I am not a "Sunshiner". I'm a senior UNIX administrator for a large pharmaceutical company. I administer Linux, Solaris and HP-UX (and occasionally even Windows!) servers. Unlike you, I can appreciate the advantages that each of these platforms bring instead of just bashing one of them because of some ridiculous bias.

Since when has DTrace been anything like GlancePlus?

Comparing DTrace with GlancePlus?!! Please tell me you're joking! That's one of the craziest comments you've made since you said Oracle was single threaded! Whatever shred of credibility you had has now been wiped out with that absurd comparison.

GlancePlus is a good (but overpriced) product. We have it installed on all of our Solaris and HP boxes. You’ll also be pleased to hear that we use OpenView for all of our centralised system monitoring which is a million times better than the appallingly bad monitoring solution we had from a "well known" provider (*cough* Unisys *cough*).

However, GlancePlus is NOTHING like DTrace! This once again illustrates just how little you actually know about it and that you’re just discrediting it because it’s from Sun.

DTrace isn't just a debugging tool. It allows the system to be probed in much more advanced and detailed ways than you could ever hope to achieve with GlancePlus. They are two entirely different tools. The "D" scripting language does take some getting used to but with pre-built scripts such as the DTrace toolkit, anyone can use it with relative ease. Plus as I mentioned in my other post, you don't need to know anything about it for use on the new Sun Storage appliances as there is a graphical front end!!

Having said that, I can't understand how Sun, which has such a diverse and powerful set of hardware and software technologies at its disposal, can perform so poorly financially, even considering the current economic crisis. Let's hope they can turn it around soon. It will be a shame to lose some of that great tech, competition is advantageous for us all!

RE: Dave Moreton

Dave, you forgot this is supposed to be a NAS appliance, meant for the not-so-super-user. One of the reasons NetApp did so well in the NAS market was you could have one up and running in minutes with virtually no specialised knowledge, and maintaining it was almost as easy. When you start talking troubleshooting a Windows NAS, there is very likely going to be someone around with Windows skills given M$'s high level of penetration in the market. However, should your 7110 need some DTrace scripting, how likely is it that the average SMB will have someone whom even knows what that is? We have some Red Hat NAS systems we built a while back when times were tight (a lot like now!), but recently we have been buying Windows NAS systems for a couple of reasons:

1) We have a large WIntel/Lintel estate, and buying kit like the ProLiant NAS servers means we have commonality and can switch kit between roles, and use NAS systems to host other Windows apps such as backup tools. Windows just gives us more flexibility of choice, and if the credit crunch bites it will be Linux that will be our first alternative choice for similar reasons.

2) We have lots of Windows and good Linux experience and skills. We have people skilled in hp-ux, AIX and VMS. We did have quite a bank of skilled Solaris admins but they have largely moved on as the workload reduced for them. An interesting point is that when we offered our VMS guys retraining they took it, whereas the Solaris guys preferred to go elsewhere. Hopefully that lack of flexibility won't bite them in the rear later....

3) We have built up solid relations with Microsoft, Red Hat and HP (and IBM, though they are falling off our radar at the moment) - they worked hard to help us, whereas we did not receive the same level of commitment from Sun. Now let's be honest, did HP/MS/IBM/Red Hat go the extra mile because they're such nice people? I'm sure they're all quite loveable (well, execpt the salesgrunts), but the real reason was because they wanted our business, and we were happy to give them our moeny because we found we got back what we required. Our experience with Sun was considered hard work compared to the other vendors, to the point where it was noted that Sun was by reflex being the last choice for any discussion other than for the few die-hard Sunshiners in the team. It's not an uncommon story, just one Sunshiners seem to have a hard time swallowing.

You yourself admitted you are a senior UNIX admin for a large corporation, but I bet you're not the storage admin. Most storage admins I come across don't have Solaris skills (in fact, some I've interviewed would have trouble with point-and-click, but that's another story), they are usually tied by previous experience to their particular flavour of storage (most of the old-timers still think EMC is the best, many of the new have come up from Windows backgrounds and love NetApp or EVA). In some UNIX teams I've worked in we did have responsibility for storage admin, but that was all top-end enterprise arrays with NAS being firmly under the control of what was referred to as the "NT team" - yes, the Windows admins. Sun is now trying to sell a Solaris-based system into those same NT teams.

Whilst I think Sun made a good move in finally accepting x86 and x64, by then they had spent so many years rubbishing anything to do with x86, Windows and Linux, and loudly telling everyone that Solaris on SPARC was the answer to everything, that the majority of people I know in the industry saw it as a desperation act. Sun could have moved into x86 many years before, but was short-sighted. Now it is trying hard but it is too far behind the market curve, does not understand what the customers want, and probably hasn't got the time or cash to catch up.

Here's a simple test - imagine tomorrow you have to go before your board and advise on a purchase for a business critical project. The future success or failure of your company, your job and those of your colleagues rest on the decision. You have solutions from Sun, HP and IBM, we'll even pretend they all perform equally well and at a similar price, but the board want a risk assessment to cover the five-year lifecycle for the solution - could you stand there and recommend buying the Sun solution given their current market position, poor roadmap and the doubts over who would provide support should the Sun set? I have done that kind of exercise and each time there is less and less discussion against excluding Sun. I work for business people, not tech-heads with some unchallenged loyalty to a "Silicon Valley legend", they make decisions on business indicators and justifications, and for them the Sun position looks like bad business.

Re: Twatt Biasnt.

OK, it's a childish insult but Matt, your really are an arse!

Why the hell can't you see that your routine is the same every time, bash Sun, never ever ever under any circumstance admit a Sun product could offer good features and generally spread as much FUD as possible to discredit it.

Do us a favour and stop pretending to be an admin, if you were I'd love to know how the hell you have so much time to write this junk? We'd love to know what motivates you (hmm, can feel the answer to that coming in the form of more HP bullsh!t about how easily manageable HP product lines are). I work in a mixed team, managing Sun and HP and Linux and they are offering management nightmares and linux is the least stable of the lot. It creates real pain in our teams at times.

Nothing like the immaturity of a product like Linux, altering device paths over reboots and so forth, always a good way to create some outages.

For this latest Sun product you've seen the GUI shots so your an absolute arse bandit for stating Solaris skills are needed. This could easily be sold to a small Windows only shop and the only skill a windows admin would need would be the ability to click and use a GUI. I'm sure when sold as an appliance Sun would want to keep people out the backend to stop them fiddling so I'd expect admins to get a restricted shell for command line interaction & need a service password for getting into the OS.

Why the hell can't you either acknowledge your in HP Sales(and give up the pretence of admin) or share this massive reason for promotion of HP and bashing of Sun equipment.

FFSake troll boy, just wake up and look at yourself.

Gotta dash, awaiting delivery of your next 200 line installment of HP drivel, due to arrive shortly...

RE: AC - Sorry, not 200 lines!

"OK, it's a childish insult...." Don't worry, I don't expect a technical riposte or counter from a Sunshiner.

"....I'd love to know how the hell you have so much time to write...." Well, obviously, I'm just better at my job than you, steered the management into making the better product choices, and now have a much more reliable, resilient and manageable datacenter than you. At a guess, I'd say that's probably because you use more Sun products than we do.

"....I work in a mixed team, managing Sun and HP and Linux...." I'm betting it used to be all SPARC Slowaris and NT, but now the Slowris is being squeezed out.....

"... and they are offering management nightmares and linux is the least stable of the lot. It creates real pain in our teams at times...." So employ some better architects and some better admins. I'm guessing your core skills are around Slowaris? Linux is not new, it's been in the datacenter with real enterprise application support for years. Either you're doing something wildly different or just doing it badly, there is no reason why your Linux stack should be so bad unless you made it that way. I'm not saying Linux is perfect, but, I take it the fact that you persist with it is an indicator of how desperately you need to move off Slowaris.

"....this latest Sun product you've seen the GUI shots..." Yes, and what happens when the GUI stops working? How do you troubleshoot without Slowaris skills? When I have a problem with a Windows or Linux NAS I can troubleshoot the underlying problem either through built-in tools or the CLI - how do you do that on a Slowaris NAS without any Slowaris skills? Would you be happy to just wait around for a Sun engineer to arrive and diagnose the problem when that NAS box might hold data you really need? And if you want anything other than the default GUI tool then you need D language skills to interrogate DTrace.

"....so your an absolute arse bandit..." Well, that's new, a bit of homophobia thrown in with the usual Sunshiner paranoia. So, everyone who doesn't agree with you is now gay as well as a competing vendor employee? The wife will be amused to hear that. Not sure what the Reg Ts & Cs on posting state but I can't see them being too happy with homophobia, probably best you posted AC. Wouldn't want anyone getting the idea you were a biggot as well as a deluded, paranoid cultist.

"....Why the hell can't you either acknowledge your in HP Sales..." Because I'm not, I've never worked as a salesman. Wash your mouth out! I consider myself far too honest to be a success as a salesman, I personally can't stand liars which is one of the problems I have with Sun and there long history of FUD, lying and denial. I know they do it because they think it causes the "opposition" problems, but tit often just causes problems insde our team. We do have some Sun contacts I respect and trust, but they are the minority.

RE: Anonymous, Cowardly Sunshiner

Ah, another response brimming with technical genius - not! Just to really worry you, I've heard a whisper from a Fujitsu birdie that they don't actually need anything from Sun. After all, you open sourced both SPARC and Slowaris, so they don't need to waste money digging you out of the hole, they can just sit back and wait to pick up your best minds when the Sun sets. They don't need your patents, they don't need your wannabe storage business, and they wouldn't pay good money for MySQL. Probably not what you Sunshiners want to hear!

RE: AC - Sorry, not 200 lines!

Oh Matt, part of me feels like I should just let you close the argument and have the final word as another part of me knows your going to post egocentric rhetoric to anythjing posted here. However, you seem well practiced at trolling, you even evoke an emotion, it's even possible your insults deserve a response!

There are plenty of technical points made in previous AC posts & please be assured there are plenty of "sunshiners" out there who have a very good understanding of IT equipment. You seem to get confused periodically as to how many of us there actually are.

There you go matt, two leads for your next sales pitch, tell us again how stupid and overpaid Solaris admins are and lead in again with how good HP's IT equipment is....

I'm not surpised by your pompous statements with regards to why you have so much time to waste here. Of course, it's those amazing HP tools and systems, you just turn them on and they manage themselves!! Tell us about them again! What discount can you offer us to migrate to them? ( and yes, before you spout crap about self managing go read about Solaris Fault Management and self healing, awaiting an insult on that technology as well)

Carrying on, how on earth your guessing the size & the history of our data center over a forum amazes me? Are psychic skills on your CV as well as official FUD distribution experience? FYI, we're mixed, from windows to vms, Linux to HPUX to Solaris and have hardware from virtually every vendor yet every system seems to have it's place. We have an fellow here who's a bit like you, only one shoe fits as long as it has the HP logo on it, you two would get on like a house on fire. Naturally you'd agree that was down to your long term vision and belief in HP strategies Matt, tell us about them again, I reckon you can get at least 8 lines out of that!

One direction forwards and thats towards HP!!

WTF are you on about regarding Linux instability? We lose paths to devices over reboots, to me a sign of an immature OS and your counter is that Enterprise Application support has been there for years? There two totally different subject but ta for the insults, I take it you don't use Linux very much if your not seeing these things? Forums suggest it's reasonably common even if little explanation is offered out there. Vendors will support their apps where-ever they can possibly sell the apps & linux has a good market share (come on Matt, more bait there for your next post...)

With regards to the Solaris OS in a Storage Appliance, honestly Matt we're both guessing. My bet says Sun will lock people out of the OS (so idiots don't stick extra services onto an OS meant to be running storage services only) I very much doubt the average windows guy will get in but I'm sure passwd's will circulate in the usual places and people can get in if they really want to.

(come on matt, people getting in, there has to be a link as to how secure HP products are...)

Apologies for the arse bandit, thats just an idication of how annoying I find you, I think if your skin were a little thinner you'd see the annoyance in many people posts but perversely you seem to enjoy annoying people. Every post these days seems to have some Sun directed insult in it, (like your previous one where you labelled the majority of Sun contacts as people who you should not trust, stating they are liars)

You might watch it for the lawers Mr Bryant, there's a point where a Coporation might take offence. I'm may direct insult (as do you) but it's aimed at a posting alias psuedonym where we don't even know which country you live in. Probably the states judging by the posting times.

Your actually aiming at a genuine real-life company brimming with lawyers! Care to substantiate that sentiment in court? I very much doubt any sane person would.

As they say, wake up and smell the coffee, no-one here is rigourously bashing HP and your the only one rigourously bashing Sun.

Come on Mr Kettle, lets see if we can leave it now or do you want the final say? Do I get it or you?

RE: RE: AC - Sorry, not 200 lines!

"....There are plenty of technical points made in previous AC posts....." My riposte was in response to your post, not theirs. You were being childish that time, as you admitted yourself.

"....how on earth your guessing the size & the history of our data center over a forum amazes me? Are psychic skills on your CV...." No, just going on my previous experience of Sunshiners. I interview plenty of them and the story is similar - Slowaris wall to wall, then the rot set in and Sun stopped delivering, and they had to accept more and more non-Sun kit, until the Slowaris was in the minority and they were competing for jobs with Windows or Linux admins whom asked for a third less money. Many of them are very intelligent and skilled, but few of them seem to be able to get over the Sun snobbery and accept they might have better chances cross-training onto another OS.

"....I take it you don't use Linux very much if your not seeing these things?...." We use a lot of Red Hat, especially with Oracle, and it is not a problem I'm familiar with. Did you bother to ask your Linux vendor for assistance? But I'm guessing it's some out-of-date Sun FUD you've read off the Sun marketting pages, or just not a problem with Red Hat. Or maybe we've just been lucky and you weren't, who knows! Maybe you should let your local Sun marketting droid know he needs to update his FUD. In the meantime, I'd choose RHEL over Slowaris in 99% of cases.

"....My bet says Sun will lock people out of the OS...." Ah, so if the GUI fails you really do have to sit around and wait for a Sun engineer to come and diagnose the problem, let alone fix it. Seems a lot slower than a Windows or Linux NAS where I can get in and do some investigation myself, maybe even fix the problem without needing to call out an engineer.

"....so idiots don't stick extra services onto an OS meant to be running storage services only...." Ouch, not a very nice way to talk about your customers, I thought you said Sunshiners "have a very good understanding of IT equipment", but now you're saying they might be idiots? Are you also implying with all that hardware the Sun NAS boxen are so overloaded any extra load will kill them? Not a very good advertising point, does this mean you be forced to buy a second server for any other apps like backup? Wanna guess what I can do with my Windows and Linux NAS boxes....?

"....Your actually aiming at a genuine real-life company brimming with lawyers! Care to substantiate that sentiment in court? I very much doubt any sane person would...." Sounds like an (empty) threat to me. Are you really saying Sun are so dead set on silencing any criticism they'd get the lawyers out? Well, actually, looking back at their rediculous demands for a customer NDA before they fixed the onbaord Broadcom problems a few years ago, Sun seem very determined to silence any criticism whatsoever! But what are they going to do - threaten the Reg with no more scoops unless they delete all critical posts from their forums? Threaten a customer - yes, I still sign off on support for some of the old SPARC kit we haven't got rid of. Even more interestingly, seeing as it seems to wound you so deeply, are you making these wild threats from a position of knowledge, inside Sun? Very naughty! What is Sun's position on homophobia, might that not interest your own lawyers?

But I'm not worried, all those Sun lawyers are too busy fighting the NetApp lawsuit, or taking care of redundancy cases with employees, or maybe are even some of the 6,000 starter redundancies themselves! If Sun is "brimming with lawyers" not on the 6,000 list are you saying MrSchwartz has already given up on innovation and is just going to fire all the engineers and developers and stick with making money as a patent troll? Lol! Even if Sun ever wanted to take me to court I'm sure I could just spin it out for a few years until Sun finally runs our of money and disappears.

Dear Matt,

I'm no Sun fanboy (we just ditched Sun storage and went with NetApp), but Matt, you're blowing way too hard.

You started out with a bunch of wild claims that were obviously wrong to anyone like me (a common-or-garden infrastructure architect) who'd actually stopped to read the technical briefs first, and then transitioned majestically into flamebait and TLDR territory.